Into the Abyss of Daemonheim
by Doctor-Fluffywolf
Summary: 6 adventurers decide to visit Daemonheim and generally adventure in the way you only can in Daemonheim. But La Dama Fortuna conspires against them. This isn't going to be any foray through Daemonheim... it'll be a battle for their lives.
1. Descent

**I'm doing this because I realized I wanted to do a Daemonheim fanfic and get to the Mos'le Harmless arc soon, and I realized it was taking too long.**

_**Characters in Haru's party:**_

*Haru Daniels Nikolaievitch:  
Physical description: at least 6 foot 7, white hair with black tips, orange eyes, and tanned skin. Often seen in a long blue coat. Also a werewolf.  
Attack style: Anything but summoning.  
Skills: Blacksmith, herbalist, fletcher, chef, and forester

*Izzy "Cobblestone Killer" Reckoning  
Physical description: Average height, brown hair  
Combat style: Magical ranged-using earth spells to pick cobblestones and rocks out of the ground and shoot them at the unheard of rate of 2 per second. Don't tell him his real first name. Ever.  
Skills: Runecrafting, cooking, fletching, and farming

*Clement Delarev:  
Physical description: Average height, red and black hair  
Combat style: Fencing and stabbing  
Skills: Biologist, herbalist, slayer.

*Sarah Callista "Cally":  
Physical description: five foot nine, messy brown hair  
Combat style: She uses a very large hammer.  
Skills: Farming, herbalist.

Danielle Nikolaevitch:  
Physical description: Haru's twin sister  
Combat style: Magical ranged  
Skills: Crafting and smithing

Sami Blackwood:  
Physical description: Average height, purple hair  
Combat style: ranged, and she's currently trying out Keldagrim Gonnes. Not much luck there...  
Skills: Fletching and tracking

_**Other Characters:**_

Grandspoon Chekhov the Lost:

Physical description: Unknown

Combat style: Unknown

Skills: Forestry and getting lost. The latter was put to great effect when his party left him to make resources while they fought the boss. When his team came out, Grandspoon was lost forever. He's become a legend among Daemonheim explorers...

Well, of course you know this is a Chekhov's gun!

If you would like to submit your own character, let me know!

Oh, and if you know of another Daemonheim fanfic, let me know. I'm amazed at how few I've seen...

...

Haru, Izzy, Clement, Dani, Cally, and Sami stood in front of a massive castle, near many of tents.

"Welcome to hell, friends," Haru lazily said, drinking from a bottle of 'rum'. "Or Daemonheim, as we prefer to call it."

"You're not exactly inspiring confidence…" Clement observed.

"Don't feel bad, I'm already scared here too," Haru replied. "Here we are at Base Camp One, the greatest tent city in Gielinor."

It did*'t look like the greatest tent city in Gielinor, a place even more visited than Pest Control. It looked like a camp full of people barely hanging on. Tents stood in small clusters, around metallic barrels full of fire and ruined collapsed buildings, and battered equipment lay around all over the ground.

"Most of the stuff we find-the logs, the magical equipment, the books-are a little warped, but they're pretty untouched by Daemonheim's sphere of influence," he observed.

"Wait. Sphere of influence?" Sami asked. "And why'd you say We? You don't live here, as far as I know."

"You're right. I live in Mos'le Harmless," Haru agreed. "But I was born into the Fremmenik clan. As to why I don't have a Fremmenik-sounding name, it was some bizarre agreement on the part of my mother Anastasia and my dad Thaddeus… or Thorrak, as his Fremmenik name is. Something to do with my grandmother being from Nippon…"

"Don't ever ask," Cally put in. "It's one of those long, funny stories that's not funny or even really a story."

"I meant sphere of influence," Sami continued.

"It's widely agreed among planar theorists, runecrafters, Fremmeniks, and people who've seen it themselves that something of Daemonheim warps reality around it. Not that cursed edifice up there," Haru pointed to the castle, "But an evil object known as 'rift', said to be the destructive counterpart to the Stone of Jas. It breaks down metals, animals, and plants, and merges them with other metals, often creating unstable hybrids, only a few of which are known to be able to exist in the known world without unpleasant things happening to their molecular structure. Probably not much of a coincidence it's near the Fist of Guthix arena…." He pulled out a book, and flipped through page after page, looking for something. This continued until they walked up to a crumbling building that looked like it had been thrown together from everything on hand.

"Wait, did Haru just give a brief lecture on something educational?" Sami asked.

"Well, I do have a degree in planar theory," Haru replied.

Sami snorted as she realized how improbable that sounded.

They opened the door to the crumbling building, and then walked what seemed like a cellar space. It was full of Fremmeniks laughing and drinking as if it was their last day on this plane. In another corner, however, there was a large grouping of spheres on copper ropes hanging from the ceiling. A tall, skinny man with honey-blond hair, wearing Neitiznot Yak-hide armor and a long, leathery coat held together with some thread, yak-hair rope, and some dagannoth horns, Misthalin beer, and Fremmenik war-axe at his side, was sitting and watching the images on the orbs intently.

There'd be a plip noise, and he'd suddenly stare at a nearby scrying pool he'd set up in a bowl. Then he'd drink some beer, complain about its ****-like quality and how hard it was to find good beer so close to Misthalin, and get back to looking at the orbs.

"Well then, Denvald, that's why I'm glad I'm Fremmenik, that I drink Vodka, and that I have this Guardsman's Stout, I got it at Commander Veldaban's retirement party!" Haru grinned.

"Haru! You brought Callista, Dani, Izzy, and Clement! And that stout you need special training for, and some girl I've never met!"

"As a word from previous new female friend of Haru's to another, expect to be blindsided by Haru's various friends," Cally put in. "It was hard enough with the photocopied memories, but you shouldn't have that problem."

"Photocopied memories?" Sami asked.

"You're better off not knowing," Haru answered. "Sami, this is my old friend Denvald Nonsson, traveling Fremmenik seer, heavy drinker, beserker, Dominic Deegan fan, and infamous dwarf-stepper. Denvald, this is Sami, one of Cally's friends who I've never met. But I saved her life, and…" he shrugged. "Well, you know the saying. If you save someone's life, you are forever responsible for them." There was a pause. "And on that note, I'm responsible for asking you why the hell you're here instead of flinging a knife into some Forgotten Warrior's eyeslit down in Daemonheim?"

"The Fremmeniks called the Moon Clan in, cause someone had to enchant all the rings of kinship," Denvald replied. "I was one of the few seers that could understand the monitoring equipment. But they take me on raids now and then, and call in some other seers.*

*What's the monitoring equipment do?" Sami asked.

"Just what the name implies," Denvald answered. "It's part of an ancient spell dating back to the God Wars, which hones in on the magical energy of the Rings of Kinship, and helps us map out dungeons. It's interesting work, mapping out the known dungeons, and adding to the database of monsters. Also, it makes the function that revives someone at the brink of death more reliable. It picks up anomalous readings on a disturbingly regular basis, though… there's one now.*

Haru concentrated on the sphere Denvald was pointing at. It showed a daemonheim map from the perspective of an adventurer with level 60 dungeoneering. The image became burbly and distorted, then zoomed in back and forth, scrolling down readings of every possible kind except holy at breakneck speed.

Finally, the image zoomed in on a large circle.

"Eh? That's not a dungeon… too deep. Too small, really," Haru observed.

"The Abyss…" Denvald gasped. "I thought it was only a myth! Just a tale made by Fremmeniks that survived Operation First Contact, back in those chaotic days, you couldn't be sure if up was up, right was left, if the adventurers that went in were male when they first came up (Haru broke into a fit of coughing here) how many damn monsters were real and what wasn't just the place warping your mind like… like…"

"Like mad cow disease to your brain, plasmids on your cells, or the effect the Red Marker and the Necromorph Corruption have on your mind?" Izzy suggested, earning him a You took the words right outta my mouth look from Haru.

"I'm not sure I understand the last two, but yes! That'* exactly it! To some people, it happened on their body... but because of it, they developed immunities to Daemonheim. Kind of like you, Haru."

_/Who knew lycanthropy could be so handy?/_ Haru thought. "The abyss, huh. The legendary Vent, the Bottomless Pit, the eating hole… perhaps we'll find it on our way through," he said.

The six adventurers stood in the foyer of Daemonheim. It gave an impression of darkness somehow, with shadows flitting about. Only Sami had armor on.

"Please tell me that's because it's easy," she groaned.

"No," Haru explained. "Evidently, there's some kind of spell erected around Daemonheim. A working that makes anyone entering Daemonheim be forced to get rid of anything but the Ring of Kinship, by making every other item too heavy to even think of using."

She deposited her armor, and with her friends arms in hand, she followed them into the Dungeons of Daemonheim.


	2. Wandering

It was impossible to say just how long the tunnel was, but the six adventurers found themselves in a room made of black rock, with a furnace of completely unfamiliar design, a vaguely circular slab of rock, and a Fremmenik. It looked like he was in a room of some great manor on the surface, but the question remained of where everyone else was. He had evidently left items on the nearby stone tables for them to take. Haru chose an oversized Argonite platebody and a large argonite battleaxe suddenly appeared in his hand.

Izzy and Dani found that a longbow and an Argonite longsword appeared in their hands. Thankfully for Izzy, there were still arrows lying around, and just as luckily, they were Zephyrium.

"Everyone ready?" Haru asked, scratching behind the wolf ears on his head, pointing at a strange door barricaded by what looked like a floating blue domino mask.

Everyone nodded. "Would you do the honors?" Haru asked Cally. She put her hands on the door, said an ancient Saradomnist exorcism that seemed like it needed to force itself to be heard, and the door opened.

They cautiously walked into the room beyond, and looked around for anything of note. Izzy magically lifted a brick from the floor, and pointed his arm in seemingly random directions, like a Varrock watchman with a crossbow.

Haru walked around the room, until he came to a small cell, and sniffed the air. "I smell... kratonite."

A kratonite warhammer came out of the darkness, and hit Haru in the back of the neck. "Bugger. Not again," he groaned, and spun around, kicking wildly into the dark room behind him. There was a brief animal groan of pain, and a forgotten warrior staggered out of the room, hammer raised. An expression of pure malice was visible through its helmet's eye-slit.

Izzy ruined it when the rock that had been floating in front of him shot through the air and brained it in the face. Haru seized his chance, yelled "WRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYY!" and cut through its arm. How the hell he, like every other adventurer, was somehow able to cut people through armor would forever puzzle him, but on this day he knew it was him or the warrior.

Then a dagger and an arrow materialized inside the eye-slit and in the stomach, and it died.

Haru looked over at Dani and Sami, who were both holding bows. "Boom," Dani said shakily. "Headshot."

They all looked at each other, an expression of relief on their faces.

_Shworp-Shworp_

"What was that?" Dani asked. Clement stared behind them in horror.

_Shworp-shworp_

_Shworp-burp_

"There was a hole there, it's gone now," Clement said, in the tone of voice that promises a long nonsensical ramble.

Haru shook him. "What? What was it?"

"Just Daemonheim... eating... that man's body*," Clement said, realizing how wrong that sounded. "Be very glad you didn't see that."

"Images of Big Duo eating Gabriel and Gill Alexander flashing through your mind?"** Haru asked conversationally.

"No. Let's just say I'm very glad I didn't eat lunHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK!" Clement walked over to the nearby bottomless pit, and heaved. "Don't. Ever. F*****. Ask."

Haru decided it was a good idea to leave that unknown.

He looked at two of the doors in the room. "So... which way do we go?" he asked in an effort to take the subject off the awful body horror Clement had just witnessed.

"The door with the potions on it," Cally suggested. "Aren't the doors that should be logically harder to open usually leading to great rewards?"  
Haru looked at her strangely. "Didn't you see The Mummy with me?"

"You'll get more exp," she pointed out.

"Okay, ya suckered me in," Haru replied, taking a vial out of his pocket and watching as the liquids on the door filled it up.

He looked in. "Nothing threatening here," he said. "On the contrary, there's a couple rocks and a furnace. A giant rat or two, but we can sort that out..." He and Cally walked in.

Sami involuntarily shivered.

"What's wrong?" Clement asked. He sensed a question coming from her. While so many questions might be annoying to some people, Clement loved answering questions.

"That one Fremmenik poet said about guardian doors 'The gazing eye of the door watches over the room'?"

"Yeah..." Clement said slowly.

"Who does that eye belong to?"

Haru interrupted them from the other room. "Now this is interesting! Good thing that forgotten warrior in the Katagon had this book! Let's see... The Testament of Sergeant Regnibold Sturlusson Ironoak, The Occult Floors..."

...

_We have reached the end of the abandoned levels, which were once places of life._ _Joy? From what we have heard of the Master of Daemonheim, doubtful._

_The new roomscape which we come across is dark and dank as a result of its sickly purple light, and __filled with creatures stranger than what we have seen before. Gone mostly are the Forgotten Ones who looked relatively human, for what passes for human down here is to us what the twisted wind-bent Krummholtz of Trollweiss is to the Miscellanian Maples of my home. Walking Dead reign supreme, and the purple darkness presses down upon us as if it were a living being. By Saradomin and whatever other Gods there may be, I pray that we will survive long enough to find aid from the parties of Gorajo similar to our raids._

_Regnibold Sturlusson Ironoak of Miscellania._

"Interesting as hell, eh Haru?" Cally said. "Whatever happened to Reg, anyway?"

"I've'nt a clue," Haru shrugged. "Some say he and his party found one of the lost dimensions of this place and lost their way, others say they found the Warped floors. I don't think I'll be finding out anytime soon though... unless, just because I said that, it means that I now have to run into him for the sake of irony and Chekhov's gunnery."

"Warped floors?" Clement asked. It went without saying that nearly everyone else was confused.

"Now that's something I know jack shit about. Can't help ya there," Haru shrugged. "All I know is that it's really deep underground, and it's bigger than Varrock supposedly."

…

***Admit it. You've wondered why the hell bodies disappear in Daemonheim. I think this explains it, just not for all of Runescape. That'd just be wrong.**

****Gilbert Alexander is the most body-horror filled enemy in Bioshock 2 (no small feat), described as a tumorous mass of flesh in a 30-foot tall jar (it makes me wanna puke thinking of it) and Big Duo is one of the antagonistic mechs in the mecha series Big O. Evidently it's sentient, and it didn't like its pilot in the video Big O vs Big Duo (see youtube), so it ate him. I can't describe it any better than that, so just watch it. Oh, and please don't try to understand the ending of Big O- it's not as bad as Evangelion, but it's close.**

**Oh yeah, READ AND REVIEW! Because the world needs to know WHAT PLACE THERE IS for dungeoneering fanfic, and whether it can be done right without making it into boring inane tripe about "he went into the room. He killed stuff. he went into another."! IT BEGS FOR FANFIC!  
**


	3. Planequake!

**Quake**

**A/N: With the Warped Floors set to be released soon and my favorite fanfic ending, I can't just sit around. This is set to start at the opening of the Warped Floors, by the way, even though I know jack about them. I figured it'd be fun to explain what the opening of a new floor is.  
**TWANG

The forgotten warrior made only a dull grunt of pain as Cally's arrow stabbed through its chainmail. Haru ducked under its mace, which clipped his shoulder and caused him to grunt in pain, then he rammed his argonite battleaxe into its ribs.

To his dismay, more warriors were coming.**  
"**SONS OF BITCHES!" Haru yelled, and fur grew on his face, his body warping, until he was a massive white wolf.

Cally, to her credit, wasn't shocked that her friend had finally proven that his lycanthropy wasn't an informed ability. She'd grown up with him, so it wasn't a big deal. "I think I'll just sit back and watch the destruction."

Haru ripped through the forgotten warriors, howling in a way that defied description.

It was then that Clement walked in. "Holy shit! I think they're dead now, Haru!"

Haru belched. "That really, really tastes awful," he observed, shifting back into human form. Someone who hadn't known Haru for very long would have mentioned that the ears stayed with him, but again nobody cared.

"Find anything interesting in here?" Clement asked.

"No, nothing yet. I found some Bouldabass spots, in case the boss we fight is just that bad. Fascinating creatures, the fish down here. You know, they're almost completely dissimilar from every other thing I've seen in Runescape. Even the scales are of a different composition, and..."

"What?" Haru asked. "Is this about the Guiding Intelligence theory?"

"What's that?"

"The theory that every creature and plant down here was designed by something. They match the skill patterns of most adventurers conveniently... too convenient, I think. I have to scrabble for hours trying to level up my woodcutting, but down here there is a tree that gives exactly the amount you need. Natural, you call that? Bullshit."

"Well... I certainly wouldn't doubt it. I'm a scientist, who's done his damnedest to balance out his field with magic, but how would someone go about doing that?"

"Magic does everything," Dani shrugged.

"Where the hell were you while we were getting our asses kicked?" Haru asked.

"There was this weird runecrafting-ish puzzle in another room," Dani replied. "I fixed it, got into a room with an altar and some gorgonite..."

"Holy shit!" Cally yelled, jumping back from one of the doors in the room.

"What?" Clement asked.

"The boss... it's huge! We'll need all the help we can get!"

Haru groaned. "Dammit, I sold all my charms... you got any?"

Clement and Dani shrugged.

"We'll just need to wait for Izzy and Sami, then."

_earlier, topside_  
Denvald had spent most of the day sitting in front of the great "supercomputer", as Haru called it. As important a job as Monitor was, it was boring. During most of his time, he would look at the small grape-shot like objects adventurers often brought, the small metal staves that seemed to correspond to them, the treatises on Daemonheim metals and machines by the dwarf thaumoengineers who built the monitoring devices, Livingfossil's treatise on piracy in the Eastern Sea (Denvald noted with amusement that Haru was frequently cited as a contributor) and of course the journals dropped all over Daemonheim.

There was a strange whistling noise from the ramshackle machine that jutted out from his vast jungle of monitoring equipment. It had been built about a month ago by dwarven engineers and wizards, after a planequake (what some of the wizards from Yanille called events like the one that opened up floors of Daemonheim. The Fremmeniks detested the wizards, but realized they had to work together for the greater good) which had opened up the strange purple floors.

"Sonofabitch!" Denvald yelled. He jumped out of the monitoring room and ran for the castle.

"Oy!" some Fremmenik yelled. "You're supposed to stay at your post and watch us, ya-"

"If I don't check this out, I may not have anyone left to watch!" Denvald screamed. "We could all be doomed!"

He ran into the castle, pulled out a pickaxe he had stolen from a strange creature haunting the Trollweiss catacombs, and punched a hole in the heap of rubble covering a doorway.

"No..." he gasped. The red symbol in the middle of the room he found was glowing. He ran back to the monitoring station, and punched-literally punched the big red button in the middle.

"GET OUT! ANOTHER PLANEQUAKE IS COMING! LEAVE WHILE YOU STILL CAN!" Denvald yelled into the commorbs wired directly into every party's Rings of Kinship.

All over Daemonheim, the Fremmeniks looked at each other as the voices from their rings of kinship told them to evacuate immediately. Fremmeniks were a tough lot, who despised retreats with every corner of their being, but they all knew it was a horrible idea to be caught in an explosion of that much raw magical energy. "I was there with Regnibold Sturlusson Ironoak," an unnamed Fremmenik would later say, "And I was present during the planequake of last month. We lost a quarter of our men that day, and Guthix only knows what happened to them."

Denvald sighed as the commorbs representing every dungeoneering party in Daemonheim brightened as they became closer to the monitor center.

All except one. Denvald peered at it. Who could possibly-

Oh, shit.  
...

_Why haven't you left? There's a planequake coming, and you could all die! Or worse!_

"I'm a little busy right now!" Haru yelled, barely dodging Rammernaut's tree-trunk sized mace, and hacking into him with his axe.

_Busy how?_

"Trying not to die cause Rammernaut is trying to blow us to hell!" Cally yelled. "Oh, shi-"

KRANCH

"hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk!" Haru gasped. The wind had been knocked out of him.

Rammernaut smashed him under the chin with the ungodly huge mace, and sent him flying into a cluster of crates lying near the wall.

Then Clement got a lucky break, and managed to stab Rammernaut. The wound bled profusely. Almost as if he didn't believe it, Clement ducked to the side to avoid the mace and stabbed the Rammernaut again.

Same result.

"He's weak to stabbing!" Clement yelled. "Get a dagger or something!"

"Die, damn you!" Izzy yelled. A steady stream of bricks from the floor shot out at Rammernaut, who grinned and shook them off. Clement had somehow picked up twin rapiers, and was stabbing Rammernaut with a kind of furious speed he wouldn't have credited the thin biologist with. Damn that man had a yard of guts, he thought, watching as Sami and Dani sent twin arrows into the Rammernaut.

_You have two minutes left! _Denvald screamed through the rings. _Three minutes! Have you any idea of what'll happen if you're caught in that much raw energy? I don't cause of how horrible it is!_

"I know, Denvald!" Izzy bellowed. "But we can't get out!"

_Try to break open a door! I've heard he's hit the walls with his charge attack strong enough to crack them!_

_"_How do we lure him into doing that?"

It looked like Izzy would never find the answer for Rammernaut was bearing down on him and-

"WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM KICK!" Haru slammed both his feet into Rammernaut's head, dizzying him and pointing towards a strange wall.

It cracked, and light shone through.

"Holy shit, that worked!" Izzy gasped. "How in Saradomin's name did you-"

"I have no idea," Haru replied.

"Crush... puny kitty-ear man..."

"Shaddap!" Haru yelled. "Cally! To me!" they rushed at the Rammernaut, bellowing. The Rammernaut tried to squash them with his mace, but Haru and Cally dodged to the side, and smashed their ax and hammer into his chest. With an "unh!", he flew into a corner of the room. "Focus all your attacks here!" Haru yelled. "It's a dishonorable tactic that'd get anyone discharged, but we haven't a choice!"

"With you there!" Clement said, and stabbed the Rammernaut frantically. Izzy followed up with even more blocks lifted from the floor.

A counter flashed before Haru's eyes, in the script of his homeworld. _System update in 71 seconds. _God only knew how that was being transmitted to him, but hey, ya take what you're given.

_64..._

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Sami and Dani yelled, reloading their bows with three arrows at the same time.

_53..._

A block bounced off the ceiling and hit the Rammernaut in the face, smacking his head back as Haru gave him an uppercut with a Frostbite Dagger. For no discernable reason, there was a small cold explosion as he did so. _(A:N: the frostbite dagger actually can do this. Just on a less dramatic scale, as it can give an extra magic-based 50 lp of damage with one hit now and then. The mechanics of this extra 50 are a mystery, as it can pierce Bulwark Beast armor yet it's negated by Protect From Magic.)_

_42..._

"**** you to hellll!" Haru yelled, dodging as Rammernaut slashed at his head with a dagger the size of a shortsword. Haru jumped up as it passed over him, then scored a vicious blow as he rammed the bluish battleaxe into Rammernaut's neck.

_31..._

Rammernaut broke free of the 'corner gravity well' as some dungeoneers called it, and brought out his mace, smashing Izzy's foot. "YOU DASSN'T!" Clement yelled, and rammed the rapier through Rammernaut's adams apple.

_22..._

Rammernaut lumbered toward Haru. How could he still be moving? What the hell was he? Granted, some would say the same of Haru, but this was really pushing it. It was like slasher flick immunity. Sighing, and praying to Saradomin this would get better, Haru yelled "Muda muda muda muda muda!" he jumped up in the air, landed on a particulary large brick thrown by Izzy. Cally followed on the ground.

When the brick hit Rammernaut, Haru swung his battleaxe in a way very unlike his usual combination of Fremmenik battlaxe-fighting and swordfighting. The strike cut, sure. But that was only secondary to the force contained in it, which practically exploded the Rammernaut's chest.

_11..._

Izzy wasted no time in looking for their reward, and rushed for the entrance. Everyone followed. The floor shook. Bursts of raw energy shot out of the floor. Eyes sprouted from the walls with hungry looks and disappeared. Skeletons rose from the floor and disappeared. Images of people from times past who had visited this floor, both advancing and dying, flashed by. The magic was rampant, changing everything in its path to unstable hybrids. _Cockroach-trees, _Haru thought crazily, remembering a book from his home about a world like Runescape but even more deadly.

_3..._

"Go, go, go, go!" Haru screamed, as they climbed up the magic ladder to the surface. Drawing upon the reserves of magic he usually used to augment his strength or lighting his battleaxe on fire, he sent out raw concussive force beneath him, trying to get them all to the surface.

_1..._

"We're almost there!" Izzy yelled, trying to get the wall to elevate them up like a lift.

_0..._

As the wave of energy hit them, Haru realized one thing. The energy chasing them wasn't magic. It was simply destruction and chaos made solid by Daemonheim._ Which made sense, seeing as Daemonheim was solid chaos and destruction_ he thought as he faded out of consciousness.

**The book Haru mentioned is Perdido Street Station, just for those of you who're curious. And yes, this is where the story gets really weird.**_  
_


	4. Back in the swing of things

**Recently, I found out that a finale event is planned for Daemonheim. What could it be, I wonder...**

"ugh... my head..." Haru groaned. "Sonova-"

Where the hell was everyone else? Where the hell was he, for that matter?

He uncurled himself from the sleeping position he'd assumed, stood up on all fours, and-

Four legs?

He looked at himself in a nearby pool of water. Ah. He'd turned into a wolf while sleeping. That happened a lot. He snatched some fish from the water, eating them and spitting out the bones, he looked around. It looked like he was in a smuggler's room, but it was very overgrown. The furnace had a small bag, and almost lost its heat (wherever the hell that came from), the spinning wheel was broken, and the water trough was full of flatfish. Just behind some vines, however, Haru saw a door. But he couldn't open it without a service knife or something, and a service knife wouldn't be good in combat. He looked at the bag, and groaned.

It was full of Gorgonite. Despite having a level of Smithing that was considered "inhuman" several years ago, Haru hadn't grasped the concept of making Gorgonite.

Steeling himself, and wishing he could've brought some Olde Suspiciouse, Haru shifted back into human form, picked up a nearby hammer, took out the Gorgonite and tried to shape it into sword form. It didn't quite work, he lost several bars, but he ended up with a machete-sword of the poor yet strangely awesome workmanship found in Daemonheim.

He started hacking through the vines covering the door, opened it, and found himself in a long corridor.

Wait. A corridor? Why the bloody hell didn't he run into one of those sooner? That question, by the way, was secondary to why it looked like the tropical forests outside his home, and why he could see stars through the ceiling. He could swear he saw his house at Mos'le Harmless off in the distance, lights in the windows, and the tavern where he'd hang out with people like Ed Teach and Izzy no-beard-

This was too perfect. Far too damn perfect. Besides, what if his friends were still down here? Maeve wouldn't have wanted him to leave them all to die...

Perhaps a little too fast, Haru jimmied open the next door with his machete, and booted the door off its hinges, and walking into another room when-

SKREEEEEEEEEEE!

A long, pink wormy thing shot out of the door. Haru swore, thinking it was the tongue of whatever probably tried to eat him, and sent out a burst of panic fire (a fire spell, by the way) at it, and-

BOOM

There was a crater taking up nearly half the room, with another room visible down below. Hell's bells, was he really that good without armor? It'd been a while since he maged anything to death, after all.

As soon as he walked down and saw it, he could see why it was buried. It was like the room where you pushed the barrel around under the water pipes and the sucking pipes, but there was no barrel. How the hell was he supposed to open that door anyway? He needed a crowbar, a bigger drill, or something. Groaning, he kicked a rock to one of the sucking pipes, which immediately flew up...

Up...

OF COURSE!

Haru would later admit to the Fremmeniks in a dungeon report that the plan was incurably stupid. Real stupid.

He waited for one of the sucking pipes to turn into a water pipe, then pried off the lid that made only a small amount of water come out-to find, amusingly, that a massive torrent would come, soaking him to the bones. Praying to Saradomin that it wouldn't stab him, Haru stuck the sword in his standard-issue adventurer pack, shifted into wolf form, and waited. There was a slurping noise as most of the air in the room was sucked up the pipe. Haru tried to finish the curse from the beginning of the chapter, but just ended up hurting his lungs.

_Elsewhere..._

In a room that looked like the front of a pipe organ, Clement barely dodged an arrow from a Forgotten Ranger. It looked like a mithril arrow... where the hell were the Forgotten Rangers getting those? Wouldn't they be 'warped' in the same way Haru had mentioned? They really needed to collaborate on the physics of this place, a book would be nice.._._

_Oh yeah. Dodging arrows_, he thought, as one stabbed into his shoulder. Clement stabbed at the ranger, before he had a chance to reload. The ranger, seeing no other options, pulled out his Marmaros dagger, and slashed at Clement. Clement leaned back, and stabbed through the ranger's Adam's apple, then booted him in the chest. The ranger fell down, dead.

Clement sighed, glad that not everyone in Daemonheim was immune to throat stabs, then wiped down his blade.

Something moved nearby.

After many mishaps in Mort Myre he'd had with Haru and Maeve when they were searching for new species to give to the Varrock Museum's Morytania Unit, Clement knew when to duck, the same way Haru always knew a good place to crouch down and shoot his "gonnes," as he called them.

As he was not equipped with a ranged weapon, he couldn't find cover. So he'd just have to improvise. Taking the ranger's Marmaros dagger from the strange pile of items that appeared (he'd averted his eyes from Daemonheim eating the dead man) he held it blade down, and scanned for the noise. Then he heard one, and threw the dagger in its direction.

Suddenly, a rock launched from an earth spell flew out of nowhere and blocked the dagger.

"IZZY!" Clement yelled. "Was that you?"

"Well who the hell else shoots rocks out of the ground like a machinegun?" Izzy asked, walking out from behind a corner. It looked like Izzy, sure... but was it?

"You, definitely... Just like the time we were in the Piscatoris Wilds and I killed the Sea Troll Queen," Clement replied.

"That never happened," said Izzy. "Are you mad?"

"Considering the location, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Can't argue with that... What the hell happened to you, anyway?"

"I... I really don't know," Clement said, and realized it was true. He knew he'd been with Izzy and everyone else when fighting Rammernaut, but there was a great blank space after he climbed into the shaft. He'd found himself just walking around in Daemonheim... perhaps he almost turned into a Forgotten Warrior? He shuddered. What a horrible thought. "What I do know, though, is that we have to keep going down."

Izzy looked at him like he'd just claimed to be a Dorgeshuun from birth. Several questions moved over his face, but the one that won out was "Why?"

"It's like in those... movies... Haru loves to watch. When people get trapped in a passage with no way out, they just go down the other end. And besides... can you see an exit anywhere around here?"

"They're never that obvious," Izzy muttered, looking around. Then he focused in one direction. "Did you just hear that?"

...

_WooooooooOOOOoooo_

"Think we're better off not knowing where that's coming from?" Clement asked as they walked over a bridge. They couldn't see what was at the bottom, but there was an impression of great coldness. Vague roars and moaning sounded from deep below.

Izzy shrugged and made a vague nod. The floor they'd been traveling looked blasted and timeworn, with no hints that Forgotten Warriors, Mages, or Rangers bur for the one they fought had ever guarded it. "There's the door," he said, pointing to a door at the end of the bridge, and they walked in.

BOOM

"Oh, SH-!" Izzy started to say, jumping to the side behind a stone barrel. There were three Forgotten Ones at the opposite end of the room, though they seemed a bit more like the rugged freebooters and adventurers on the surface than the weakened survivalists that most Forgotten Warriors were. One had a very large hammer, another had a bow and a strangely glowing quiver of arrows, and the third and final... well, it was uncertain just what. It looked like a combination of an inordinately long crossbow without limbs and a metal staff.

"I'm a bit surprised this is the first gonne we've seen around here," Clement pointed out.

The warrior with the hammer looked at her companions, and yelled "Fire!"

"Got a spare range weapon?" Clement asked.

"Yeah, there was a spare bow with me. Just so you know, it's different from anything you may have used before-"

Clement strung an arrow, stood up, and fired. One of the forgotten warriors screamed as the arrow pierced a vein, and flames shot out the end of the strange tube. Clement instinctively ducked, and small chunks exploded from the wall behind him. Izzy threw flaming bottles of firebreath whiskey at them from over his barrel, which kept getting shot out of the air.

PLASH

As a Water Blast hit the barrel Izzy was hiding behind, he levitated a brick from the floor and shot it at the forgotten warrior with the strange tube. She screamed as it slammed into her shin, throwing the weapon into the air. Clement, moving faster than Izzy would have credited him for, snatched it out of the air, dropped a few shards of Izzy's former cover down the barrel, and pointed it at the 3 warriors.

"Eat _this," _Clement snarled, flicking a mechanism near the stock.

"What the hell are you doing, Clement Delarev?" the Forgotten Warrior who had used the gonne asked. Her face became clearer in the light.

Izzy swore. "Sami? We thought you were going to kill us!"

"I thought _you'd _kill _us_," the forgotten warrior with the replied. It was definitely Cally, so Clement reasoned that the other forgotten warrior was Dani.

"We've got the intruders who were stranded during the planequake!" a wizard in green robes yelled."GET THEM!" A small group of rangers, warriors, and mages teleported in, hanging on what looked like black tentacles.

Clement swore, and fired the gonne at the rangers, two of whom screamed and fell to the ground, clutching their stomachs. The warriors advanced, the rangers nocked their arrows...

And a white wolf flew out of the ceiling like a furry missile (Which describes a lot of dogs I've known) and ate a ranger's greasy head*. Then, its body morphing hideously, it stood up on its hind legs, turning into a vaguely human form. It pulled out a machete and beheaded a warrior, then punched a ranger in the gut. "Sorry I'm late, everyone," it said. "I was kind of stuck in a pipe." With that said, he ran at the wizard in green robes, machete-sword at his side and his face in a terrifying** lupine visage.

"About time, Haru!" Cally yelled, following him.

"This is so gonna get ugly," Izzy muttered.

***And before you ask, no, it didn't fly back to its home planet to fight all the bad guys.**

****Well, terrifying under the circumstances.**

**For anyone that actually reads this, sorry about any delays. I had midterms last week, (Which is horrible cause they said we wouldn't have midterms, it's one of those long funny stories that isn't long funny or even really a story) I got new games for my Xbox, and I was frozen today. Well, I was actually skiing, but there's no difference to some people. More plot-heavy chapters to come, 'specially the Christmas one. Damn I'm looking forward to that event...**


End file.
